The Raven Foundation

 

Adam discusses the International Day of Peace and the Alliance of Civilizations.

 

Visit the International Day of Peace website here: http://www.un.org/events/peaceday/2007/index.shtml

 

Visit the Alliance of Civilizations website here: http://www.unaoc.org/

 

Read the Alliance of Civilizations booklet here: http://www.unaoc.org/repository/HLG_Report.pdf

 

Tripp Hudgins and Adam Ericksen reflect on the first of a five part session on Revelation. 

 

For more of Tripp's excellent work, check out his videos here http://www.youtube.com/user/AngloBaptist and his blog here http://anglobaptist.org/blog/. 

 

 Upcoming sessions for the series are:

 August 16: Revelation Chapters 4-11. 7:00-8:30pm at First Congregational Church of Wilmette, 1125 Wilmette Avenue.

August 18: Revelation Chapters 12-18. 7:00-8:30pm at Community Church of Wilmette, 1020 Forest Avenue

August 23: Revelation Chapters 19-22. 7:00-8:30pm.  For information contact Adam Ericksen at aericksen(at)ravenfoundation.org.

 

Tripp Hudgins and Adam Ericksen discuss the second session on Revelation.

 

What is the scandal?  Jesus, Roman culture, or both?  How do you think it causes scandal?

 

For more on Tripp's work, see his videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AngloBaptist and his blog here: http://anglobaptist.org/blog/

 

To see the making of the video, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7gjO72nkvo

 

Tripp and Adam discuss the third session from the series on Revelation. The whole of Revelation should be read within the context of the Johannine school, that is, John's Gospel and John's letter. The culmination of that school is the statment "God is love" (1 John 4:16). Revelation reveals this aspect of God by transforming our understanding of God from a lion-like god to the Lamb-like God revealed through Jesus.

 

Tripp Hudgins and Adam Ericksen discuss Revelation chapters 12-18.

 

For more of Tripp's work, see his youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AngloBaptist, or his blog here: http://www.anglobaptist.org/blog/

 

Tripp and Adam discuss the final chapters of Revelation, chapters 19-22.

What does it look like to live into "the healing of the nations"?

For more of Tripp's work, see his blog here: http://www.anglobaptist.org/blog/ and his youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AngloBaptist

 

Adam discusses his experience with Islam and with Muslims in Bangladesh.

 

To read the sermon "Angels in the Mosque: Sacred Violence and Sacred Hospitality" click here: http://www.ravenfoundation.org/blogs/alternative-apocalypse/angels-in-the-mosque-sacred-violence-and-sacred-hospitality

(This sermon was delivered on Sunday, August 19, 2010 at the First Congregational Church of Wilmette.)

 

What is sacred in your life? 

 

I’m asking this question because the word “sacred” has been used a lot during the last two months in American culture, and it has me asking a few questions, “What is truly sacred?”  What do you personally hold with supreme value in your life?  What is sacred to your family?  What is sacred to us as a church?  What is sacred to us as citizens of the United States?

 

Now, whenever I preach I feel like I should say at least something about the Bible.  The Bible uses the term “sacred” in primarily two different ways.  First, it reveals the human tendency to identify material objects or places as sacred.  These are sacred objects you possess.  They belong to you or to your group.  These objects could include people, buildings, land, and other items.[1]  We associate supreme value in objects we possess and once we possess the object, we don’t want to share it with others, certainly not with strangers, for that would contaminate our sacred object.  Unfortunately, this view of the sacred leads to violence, because we don’t want to share.  Some call this “sacred violence.”  The curious thing about this, is that the more value we associate with our sacred object, the more likely others will associate the object as sacred and want to take it from us.  We see this today – everything from young people fighting over shoes or ipods, to adults fighting over inheritance or property, to nations fighting over the right to develop nuclear weapons.  Soon, the fight over sacred objects in no longer about the object, but about winning the power struggle and defeating the other. 

 

This view of the sacred is in the Bible and it has a name: idolatry.  Idolatry is one of those bad religious words in our contemporary culture, but idolatry basically refers to an excessive devotion to an object.  According to the Bible, this excessive devotion leads to a false sense of the sacred.  The authors of the Bible admitted they were not immune from the traps of idolatry.  Indeed, they admitted their propensity toward idolatry, but they also critiqued it by claiming that what is truly sacred is not given a sacred quality by humans, rather God identifies the truly sacred.  We see this in the beginning of the Bible, with the creation story in Genesis.  The first chapter of Genesis makes this claim:

 

So God created humankind in his

image,

In the image of God he created

them;

male and female he created them.

 

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Martin Luther King Jr. is a figure from the recent past who continues to stir our cultural imagination.  Unfortunately, much of our culture has fallen away from King's message and succumbed to forms violence.  Television, movies, music - it seems as though violence has become an accepted part of our culture.  The violence modeled in our culture desensitizes us to our common humanity.  Violence then becomes easier and easier to justify.  Fortunately, King continues to model an alternative and provides the antidote to the contagion of violence in our culture.  That antidote is love.  In his book Strength to Love, King wrote apocalyptically about the decisions that face humanity.  Either we will be consumed by a spirit of hate and destroy one another, or we will survive by the spirit of love that embraces even our enemies.  King wrote:

 

Upheaval after upheaval has reminded us that modern man is traveling along a road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction and damnation.  Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one's enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival.  Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world.  Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist. (49-50)

 

For more on King, click here: http://www.ravenfoundation.org/exemplars/martin-luther-king-jr

 

Suzanne discusses the impact protests are having on independently owned BP service stations.

 

Link to story on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127747890

 Tripp Hudgins, a good friend and Board Member of the Raven Foundation, sent me an email yesterday concerning the oil spill in the gulf.  He expressed concern that all of the resentment and anger directed at BP is not the solution to the problem and that BP is being scapegoated.  In the email, he sent a link to an online petition called The BP Oil Spill: A Christian Call for Lament and Reconciliation.  Here's a quote from the petition:

  

 ^{(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)}

 

We mourn the human and animal lives lost, the economies and ecosystems destroyed, and the gifts of God, created from and for his love, squandered and poisoned. Most of all we mourn our complicity and active participation in an economy based on toxic energy that has made such death inevitable.

 

I love this quote.  It avoids scapegoating BP and makes the point that we are all in this together.  We are complicit and active participants in this oil spill.  The problem is much bigger than BP.  Our dependence on oil has made death inevitable.  The problem is our cultural desire for convenience and efficiency over and against other humans and the environment.

 

Our culture likes to avoid the word "sin".  It's an ugly word.  Unfortunately, this oil spill forces us to acknowledge the ways in which so many of our individual and cultural practices lead to death and destruction.  Ugly words are the best words to describe ugly situations that we have created.  As the petition points out, the proper response to such a crisis resulting from our sins is lament, confession, and actively seeking reconciliation with God's good creation.  

 

I encourage you to sign the petition.  You can find it here:  http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/lamentbpoilspill/.

 

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A great video on the organization CeaseFire. The founder, Dr. Gary Slutkin, says, "Violence behaves like an infectious disease in every single way. We are applying exactly the methodology for controlling infectious diseases. CeaseFire engages the community to work with young people at high risk of being involved in violence, provides on-the-spot alternatives to shooting, and works to change social norms about gun violence."

 

Indeed, violence is a contagion.  Dr. Slutkin is pointing to the cure. 

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Dr. Lederach helping to build peace.

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Nonviolent Peaceforce is a federation of over 90 Member Organizations from around the world. In partnership with local groups, unarmed Nonviolent Peaceforce Field Team members apply proven strategies to protect human rights, deter violence, and help create space for local peacemakers to carry out their work. The mission of the Nonviolent Peaceforce is to build a trained, international civilian peaceforce committed to third-party nonviolent intervention. 

- Desctiption from youtube.

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My friends Michael McLean and John Batdorf wrote a musical video that John performs for an organization in L.A. called “Urban Compass working to stop youth violence.” The music video begins with an unsettling lyric: “There are refugees among us who are not from foreign shores” who are not making the headlines, who suffer unseen and untended to within our midst. Then statistics appear: Violence is the leading cause of death for young people in every major city and 80% of violence victims are between the ages of 18 and 24.

A duet choreographed by Lar Lubovitch, Dogs of War, performed by Attila Joey Csiki and Christopher Vo, addresses the relationship between two soldiers and their individual struggles to maintain a sense of humanity during wartime.  Images of barbwire, barricades, and battle scenes are projected on three screens behind the two men. These screens run a symbolic red towards the end of the work.

 

Dogs of War begins with two soldiers dancing in a militaristic manner.  As the most narrative of the night's pieces, the characters then take solos, each confronting their own fears and responsibilities, and eventually engage in a complex confrontation with each other. Although on opposite sides of a war, the two men share in moments of empathy for each other and, in a fleeting passage, care for and cradle each other.  A piece as political as Dogs of War would be heavy-handed if not for Lubovitch’s ability to craft theater rather than theatrics.  Although the work and the projected images hint at the Vietnam War, within the overarching program, Dogs of War seems less like a look back, and more like a look at how things have yet to change.

 

Official Dance Review by Tze Chun
Performance: Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
Choreography: Lar Lubovitch
Venue: The Joyce Theater, New York City
Performance Date: March 2, 2010

Posted on http://www.idanz.net/blog/view/id_568/title_Lar-Lubovitch-Dance-Company-Moves-to-the-Music/